Have I offended anyone?

Offensensitivity.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ this clearly depends on how you define "God". If you're talking about the "Einsteinian" god, then I certainly won't disagree.

no, I am not talking about the Einsteinian God. but I am also not talking of "God the wandweaver" who can let just anything happen.
I think of the world not as a combination of matter and energy. for me the world is a gigantic process, maed of myriad of subprocesses which interact with each other. and the sum of all these processes is "God". the question is: does this God have a consciousness? to answer that we first have to answer where consciousness comes from, something which is still a total mystery to scientists. all we know is that human beings appear to have one; at least every human being believes him/herself to have one and by inference that other human beings also do. but what exactly IS this consciousness? one thing is for certain: it is a highly complex, self-referential process. now I propose that any process of a certain level of complexity and self-refference will develop a consciousness. at least some processes do; human beings are living proof of that. and the most complex and self-reflective process in the world is of course the Cosmic Process (a word I use instead of "universe", since for me everything is a process). my proposal is that this process has a consciousness too, and this consciousness I call "God".
some may argue that this is quite a leap of faith, but I don't agree. on the contrary, I think it is nothing but the last recess of anthropocentrism to believe that our consciousnesses are the only conscious processes in the world. I see no reason why consciousness should be confined to living beings only. why, the definition of what "life" actually is may as well have to be changed as our knowledge extends

Absolutely no offence from the dark Western corner of Wales, and I love PF site as well.

NOW will you improve my trust status.....Just joking. You are a valued member of this community and I tend to find that people who do give rise to genuine offence here on a regular basis get very short shrift, and quite rightly to.

Oh no, no, no, not another thread about religion! You stop it now!

Let's rather talk about the need for fat and sugar in a honest diet.

stonebeard wrote: First thing is you shouldn't worry about offending people sometimes. Chances are, you'd be a very boring person if you did. I personally joke about almost everything on here, and If people get offended at "f**k" and occasional crudeness then they've got a bushel of sticks up their ass. Anyway, I should say that it's almost impossible to have a discussion on religion without offending anyone. It's even impossibler to take the position of of a hardcore, unflinching science guy. You're bound to irritate some people.

I have said  it a thousand times, and I will repeat it a thousand times if necessary: there is no contradiction at all in being a "hardcore, unflinching science guy" and believing in God. on the contrary, my belief in and understanding of, in essence my "concept" of God is a very scientific one


Edited by BaldJean - April 01 2010 at 14:16

I kind of think if you're not offending someone you're not doing something right. 

Thanks for all the support (and/or criticism)!

BTW: Of course I'll continue to irritate people ...

Mike!

You're an intelligent person, great orator and great contributor...and I'm not talking about the website of yours, which is an entire galaxy that deserves credit...I'm talking about you as a person..it's always great to have you around (and I have to admit, even if I sometimes disagree with you, most of the time I like your 'train of thoughts').

offended? no, not really. but certainly annoyed at times. this only refers to threads in which the existence of God was discussed, and some of your remarks in that regard were a bit down the nose, in the vein of  "well, you are a nice woman Jean, but a bit daft when it comes to the existence of God". I did not really feel offended though

^ that's one of the reasons why I don't maintain my Last.fm profile any more ... it still logs what I play, but I much prefer the PF way (naturally) by which I simply add an interesting album that I listened to to my playlist. The advantage compared to a forum thread is that the information is stored structurally. For example, when you add an album and tag it "Eclectic Prog Rock", it will automatically add the artist as a suggestion for the appropriate team. It also only takes a few moments to do that, so it's not like you have to decide whether you use PF or any other method.